In a broadband communication network, such as an Internet protocol (IP) network, a subscriber connects to the network by establishing a subscriber session between a subscriber's device and the network. Examples of a subscriber's device are a computer, a modem, a portable digital assistance (PDA) device, a tablet, a mobile phone, a smartphone, and the like.
As known, the point-to-point (PPP) protocol is a network communication protocol of the data link layer of the ISO-OSI model which may be used for establishing a subscriber session. Moreover, the dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) is typically used on IP networks for dynamically distributing network configuration parameters, such as IP addresses, to subscriber's devices requesting to access the network.
Typically, a subscriber session is established between the subscriber's device at the customer premise and a service node belonging to the network, which routes the traffic to and from the subscriber on the broadband communication network. For instance, the service node may be a provider edge (PE) node or a broadband remote access server (BRAS) managed by the network operator. A broadband communication network may include a plurality of service nodes. The subscriber's line is physically connected to an access node such as, for instance, a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) or an optical line termination (OLT), managed by the network operator, which is situated at an intermediate position between the subscriber's device and the service node. Typically, a plurality of subscribers are connected to the same access node that in turn may connect to one or more service nodes. The access nodes and the service nodes are connected by means of an aggregation network, which is usually an Ethernet network or an IP/multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network.
The assignment of the subscriber sessions of an access node to the one or more services nodes of the communication network is usually static and performed during the network provisioning phase.
US 2008/0186982 discloses a system that includes a plurality of aggregation nodes. Each aggregation node is configured to generate a node utilization data. A pool master is configured to generate a node utilization list responsive to the node utilization data received from each aggregation node and to activate the plurality of aggregation nodes responsive to the node utilization list.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,487,243 discloses a network device that includes a tunneling module that load balances subscriber sessions across a plurality of tunnel termination devices based on weightings associated with the tunnel termination devices. The weightings may be assigned to the tunnel termination devices by a user, or may be calculated by the network device based on resource constraints associated with the tunnel termination devices. The network device may calculate the weightings, for example, based on a maximum number of subscriber sessions supported by each of the tunnel termination devices. As one example, the techniques may be applied to load balance point-to-point (PPP) subscriber sessions across L2TP network servers (LNSs).